24: Leech

Bakkertag 18^th Sigmarzeit

Balden came back from his stay in the marshes to find that Berta had moved into his bed, but Frau Koester was happy to make another bed for him on the floor, and that was more comfortable than his parents’ place any way.

Over breakfast you decided that you would revisit Smaalkanaal and try to work out exactly which warehouse you had robbed, and you also wanted to check whether the pool you had found really was legit and part of the temple of Shallya. And you wondered whether the Verdant Heart was legit, as well.

At Smaalkanaal there were three labourers ready to work with their shovels and cart but the engineer hadn’t turned up yet. And the labourers complained that some idiot had locked up the Brass Serpent.

You then went to the temple of Shallya and its location correlated with your calculations. Outside there was a line of beggars waiting for their dole and some sick people queuing for the infirmary. You saw a number of nuns and priests wearing white robes with a red heart patch. You went into the main hall of the temple to pray but none of you really felt the spirit of Shallya entering you.

Then you went down to Doodkanaal and right about the point which you thought the tea smuggling chamber had been, there was a warehouse with some Indic and Wastelander signage which said Rajan Trading Company.

The warehouse activity looked about normal except there was a couple of well-armed guards on duty outside it. You had a look around and there was a small side door to the building but you decided to enter the front on the pretext of wanting to do some business. Only Balden and Dietrich went because, although you saw no sign of the guard who had escaped your attack the previous day, Max and Berta didn’t want to risk being recognised.

You saw that the warehouse was full of lots of different crates with Indic writing on and many of them had a seven-petalled flower logo. Most of the workers looked local but there was an Indic looking man in a turban who seemed to be in charge, and you also spotted an Indic-looking clerk entering what you thought might be an office.

You spoke to the turban guy and told him you might be looking to purchase Indic magical items on behalf of your college. He introduced himself as Javed Rajan and said Indic wasn’t really a thing as there were number of states in Ind and he was from Maharan. And he said that they didn’t really do artefacts or magical items like that and apart from ivory figurines of the gods of the Infinite Pantheon. He dealt mostly in food.

He said his family had been trading with Marienburg for over a hundred years and then he showed you a load of weird and wonderful foodstuffs like green cardamom bricks, palm sugar, pickled limes, ginger resin, turmeric root, candied rose petals, coconut milk powder, lotus pods, and water lily seeds.

You weren’t interested in any of that and so steered the conversation towards how one might smuggle goods into and out of the city. Rajan said that he usually didn’t do things like that, but understood it was common practice in Marienburg and invited you up to his office to discuss things.

Up in his office a servant brought in a tea pot and Rajan did an elaborate ceremony with prayers to prepare the tea. You were respectful of his efforts, and eventually got to drink some tea. And in the end Rajan said he could introduce you to someone who would be able to do the smuggling and you arranged to meet him at the Rajan warehouse at six the next day.

Then you decided the tunnels required some more exploring and you made your way back to Smaalkanaal, and on the way there most of you felt like you were being watched, and Berta caught a brief glimpse of an Indic looking man following you.

At Smaalkanaal the engineer had arrived and they were hard at work. Max wondered how long you would have to revisit the tunnels before they were flooded by the dredging and calculated you would have at least a day. And the new engineer took that as an insult and said he would get it done quicker than that.

You entered the tunnels, and after Dietrich and Balden had got used to the smell, you made your way to the narrow bit you hadn’t wanted to squeeze through the day before. And Dietrich squeezed through it and found himself in a cheese cellar, with lots of big wheels of orange rinded cheese. Unfortunately the wheels were too big to get through the narrow bit.

Berta had been concerned that you might have been followed by the Indic guy and so waited by the tunnel that led to the Shallyan temple, and she heard a strange slithering noise, and smelled something like the tunnels but far worse. So she called Max and Balden, who called Dietrich.

And coming out of the darkness you could see a slug-like, greenish, sort of amoeboid, creature, as wide as the tunnel, slithering towards you. Max fired his pistol at it. He got a good hit on it, but the bullet seemed to enter its body and be engulfed by its flesh and not trouble it at all. It was pretty frightening, anyway, so you decided to run for it. You didn’t like the idea of squeezing through to the cheese cellar so you headed for the temple.

You went up the steps to the temple pool and found three diseased looking women in the pool, shocked to see you. You went past them and through an archway and up some steps and found yourself in the middle of the temple of Shallya. They were mostly of the Order of the Bleeding Heart but you saw a few from the Verdant Heart so that made you think they were legit.

You went back down to the pool and spoke to one of the bathers. She said that she had been bathing there three times a day for the past few weeks and had definitely been getting better, and she had heard that a great many people were being healed by this method.

Dietrich didn’t really like the idea, especially when you told him that Sister Catrina had three black circles in her green heart badge, as that made him think of a symbol of the dark gods that he had learned about in college, once, although he hadn’t been paying that much attention.

He focused on the magical winds around the pool and it looked to him like wisps of the nauseating green wind were flowing away from the pool and down the steps towards the tunnels. He wondered about their relationship to the slug-like monster. You also wondered how the pool was being fed and you asked the bathers but they didn’t know.

You decided you needed to talk to Sister Catrina about this, so you went back up to the temple and found her office. You accused her of knowing about the daemonic thing in the tunnels. She admitted that she did but said that the temple was protected by Shallya and that the healing was working so that was a good thing.

She said that it was like leeching. If you had to use a creature like that to bleed someone and if it cured them of their illness then it was worth doing, and it didn’t matter about the leech. But you said that the creature was a servant of the dark gods, probably, so it was wrong to employ it, and no one knew what the creature was getting out of the deal.

But Catrina said that sometimes Shallya had to move in mysterious ways, and insisted that what she was doing was right. You told her you might have to inform other Shallyan temples and Verenan scholars. And she said that you had to do what you had to do, but she would continue helping the sick.

And so you left the temple of Shallya wondering what to do next. You decided that Catrina was probably very sincere, but you still doubted that what she was doing was right.